An Alpine Weekend
What can you do with a long weekend? A bit of DIY, some shopping and a Sunday ride? Visit the in-laws and take in a garden centre? How about riding through France to Switzerland, making a pilgrimage to the world’s highest bungee jump so that you can chuck yourself off a dam for laughs, riding on into Italy and knocking off a few Alpine passes – including the mighty Stelvio – before bimbling home. Piece of cake. About 1,800 miles in four days. Easy.
These days all such trips begin in Folkestone. Our group comprised a BMW R1100RS, a Triumph Tiger 1050, an Aprilia Caponord and that other noted long-distance machine, a Buell Lightning – proving you can tour on anything. France passed in a blur, punctuated by fuel stops and toll booths.
The Autoroute system makes it easy to do big miles, but you pay for the privilege – expensive petrol at the services as well as the tolls. Still, you can save either time or money, not both, and at least it’s still light as we enter Basel and find our hotel, allowing us a whole evening in which to marvel at the astonishing cost of eating and drinking in Switzerland.
Day two sees us riding for an hour in the wrong direction, before the astute purchase of a map reveals the real name of our destination – the Verzasca dam in Ticino – as well as its location. Back the way we came.
However, an excellent road network takes us through valleys and tunnels – really long ones – quickly and without too much hassle. If you’ve seen the opening sequence of the Bond film Goldeneye, then you’ll understand why the Verzasca dam has become a Mecca for bungee-jumpers – at 220m, this is the highest fixed jump in the world.
On an August afternoon in Mediterranean temperatures, the jump was crowded with maniacs waiting for their turn to leap into the abyss, and with spectators: even if you don’t want to jump it is a spectacle worth seeing.
When the three jumpers in our group had leapt their fill, and the non-jumper (me…) had managed to look over the edge, it was time to get back on the bikes and head for Livigno, a tax-free Italian Alpine resort in the heart of the mountains. All four bikes were coping well with the trip, even the Buell, the latter’s rider gunning his engine hard through the tunnels just for the sheer hell of it.
The good fast good roads eventually gave way to a more hardcore experience altogether: having turned off the main artery I looked ahead and saw a narrow road with a cartoon-like crumbling parapet clinging to the side of a mountain, and started to realise just what I’d let myself in for. We rode on into the dusk, up, along and down mountains, for what seemed like hours, through surreal landscapes and along amazing roads.
The final push of the night was across a glacier well over 2,000m above sea level where the temperature plummeted but luckily we didn’t, finally descending through a series of hairpins to reach Livigno, a beautiful place worthy of a longer visit next time. But that night’s Alpine passes had been no more than a rehearsal for the next day: the famous Stelvio Pass. And there was more practise on the way there from Livigno, through breathtaking Alpine scenery and along what were, for me (did I mention my severe vertigo?) terrifying roads through, along and over mountains.
The Stelvio is, at 2,750m, the second highest paved road in the Alps and is closed until late May as until then there is still snow at the top. Its fearsome north-east side has 48 corners, most of which are ridiculously tight hairpins and many of which are blind – it’s considered to be one of the most challenging roads in Europe.
After lunch in the village of Stelvio (itself at 1,200m), we made for the peak. And this is where I found my limit – after dozens of hairpins and having risen to around 2,200m, vertigo and altitude sickness combined to stop me in my tracks – loss of coordination made it too dangerous to continue.
My bungee-jumping companions went on to the summit before joining me back in the village, then on we rode across lesser passes, eventually to find main roads again and continue to Zurich for the third night of the journey.
On the evening of the fourth day, after another hurtle through France, we arrived at Folkestone just 86 hours after leaving it.
An epic trip to remember forever, through amazing roads and awe-inspiring scenery – that’s got to be better than putting a few shelves up.